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Blended Learning: Making Professional Development Relevant and Meaningful

The U.S. spends $14 billion dollars a year on professional development that teachers often say doesn’t come close to meeting their needs.

Vicki Phillips tackles this problem at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. How can we do things differently and help teachers find the time they need to come together and collaborate? How can we make professional development relevant and meaningful to them as individuals and as a collective?

Phillips has devised a program for teachers to leverage each other’s work, an approach that can be utilized in companies and organizations too. This involves:

• Identifying clear goals, expectations and desired outcomes.

• Using data to track progress.

• Adjusting programs as needed based on results.

• Combining quantitative evidence with qualitative reports from practitioners in the field.

In a lesson on Big Think Edge, the only forum on YouTube designed to help you get the skills you need to be successful in a rapidly changing world, we consider the following questions:

-How does your organization gather information from employees in order to improve employee training and development programs?

-Do you feel your input is adequately captured and implemented?

-Are there opportunities for collaboration and peer-to-peer coaching within your organization?

-Do you find you learn as much from sharing your knowledge with others as you do from having others teach you?

Sign up for a free trial subscription on Big Think Edge and watch Phillip's lesson here: